Taunton man's body found in Taunton River

Police have identified the body of a man pulled from the Taunton River early Thursday night as 48-year-old Joseph Ferreira of Taunton. Ferreira’s body was discovered by boaters at around 5:30 p.m., according to a press release issued by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office.

Police have identified the body of a man pulled from the Taunton River early Thursday night as 48-year-old Joseph Ferreira of Taunton.

Ferreira’s body was discovered by boaters at around 5:30 p.m., according to a press release issued by the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office.

The boaters spotted the body as it floated near the Taunton Municipal Lighting Plant’s Cleary Flood Station on West Water Street.

TPD divers were able to retrieve the body by the time it was closer to the privately owned East Water Street boat ramp used by the police dive unit and local residents.

No cause of death has been revealed, and an investigation by Taunton and state police assigned to the DA’s office is ongoing. An autopsy will be performed Friday, the DA’s office said.

Members of the state’s medical examiner’s office were seen driving away with the body from the boat ramp shortly after 8 p.m.

Dive team commander Matthew McCaffrey, who was attending a training seminar on Cape Cod, was not among dive team members who responded and found the man’s body.

But he said he was contacted just after 6 p.m. that a “floater,” which is police slang for a body floating in a body of water, was in the river.

McCaffrey noted that this was the fourth body in less than a year police divers have recovered from the Taunton River.

“That’s unheard of,” he said.

Divers in June recovered the badly decomposed body of a homeless man they say had been in the river for months, and who floated down river past the Cleary Flood Station until his leg became entangled with a fallen tree. Two kayakers discovered the corpse after police said they detected a foul odor.

One month prior to that incident, police were called to retrieve the body of 47-year-old Michael Pinheiro of Taunton, whose cousin, Anthony Rose, was charged with OUI and negligent operation of a boat.

And in November, Rafael DaVeiga, 22, was killed after he drove his car off of the Edward McCarthy Memorial Bridge closer to downtown at County and Summer streets landing in the same river.

McCaffrey said the couple in the boat apparently were returning home Thursday night from a Fall River restaurant when they spotted the body as it drifted.

Weir Village resident Frank Pagliuca, 62, said he’s surprised with the number of fatalities on the river during the past year.

“This is getting to be a popular place,” he said. “I’m surprised.”

Pagliuca, who said he frequents the boat ramp area quite regularly, said he’s all but certain that everyone who took their boats on the river that day had returned safely.